Metaphor and Symbol, 28: 131–147, 2013 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1092-6488 print / 1532-7868 online DOI: 10.1080/10926488.2013.797807 Deliberate Conventional Metaphor in Images: The Case of Corporate Branding Discourse Carl Jon Way Ng and Veronika Koller Lancaster University Recent discussions on the use of metaphor have centered on how it may be used in a way that has been said to require mandatory attention to the fact that it is metaphorical, resulting in what has come to be known as deliberate metaphor (Steen, 2008). While metaphor deliberateness and conventionality/novelty are conceptually distinct, associations are likely to exist in practice. This arti- cle focuses on the deliberate use of conventional metaphor in images, by way of examining the use of animate and anthropomorphic metaphors in an instance of corporate branding discourse (i.e., the prospectuses of Singapore’s corporatized universities). Through our analysis, we show that deliber- ate conventional metaphor serves to reinforce particular conceptualizations rather than effect radical conceptual change. Moreover, we discuss visual and multimodal metaphor as deliberate if used in carefully crafted texts and draw on the notion of an image’s connotative meaning to point out how such deliberateness can be further accentuated. The article concludes by discussing some implica- tions for how the degree of conventionality is likely to have an effect on how deliberate metaphor achieves its key objective of changing addressees’ concepts of a particular Target. SHIFTING THE FOCUS FOR DELIBERATE METAPHOR That metaphor can be used in a conspicuous and deliberate way should not be particularly sur- prising. Cameron (2003), for instance, explains that in the context of education, metaphor is often used deliberately to change the recipient’s perspective on a topic and as such can aid students’ understanding of unfamiliar or difficult concepts. More recently, in making a case for deliberate metaphor, Steen (2008, 2011) has proposed a three-dimensional model of metaphor that makes a distinction between its linguistic, conceptual and communicative dimensions. The linguistic dimension pertains to the linguistic form taken by the metaphor, where it can be constructed, for example, in the form of an analogy or simile (“An organization is like a person”), a reg- ular metaphor (“An organization is a person”), or even indirectly, such as when the Target is not directly realized in the text (“A company like ours has to keep one eye on the future”). 1 The commonly invoked delineation of metaphors as novel or conventional relates to the con- ceptual dimension of the model, while metaphoric deliberateness is deemed a communicative 1 Here, and in the following, the metaphoric expressions that are relevant to our discussion appear in boldface. Address correspondence to Veronika Koller, Department of Linguistics and English Language, County South, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, UK. E-mail: v.koller@lancs.ac.uk Downloaded by [Lancaster University Library] at 13:50 20 June 2013